


deep death waits

by winchilsea



Category: How to Train Your Dragon (2010)
Genre: Gen, Warning: Everyone Dies
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-06-26
Updated: 2013-06-26
Packaged: 2017-12-16 05:21:20
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 990
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/858260
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/winchilsea/pseuds/winchilsea
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>This is where history diverges: on a night that is a catalyst for the future, Gobber lays his hand on Stoick's shoulder and says, "He's your son. Indulge the boy a little." And with a gruff sigh, destinies are rewritten.</p>
            </blockquote>





	deep death waits

This is where history diverges: on a night that is a catalyst for the future, Gobber lays his hand on Stoick's shoulder and says, "He's your son. Indulge the boy a little." And with a gruff sigh, destinies are rewritten.

The gods rumble and work to correct this blunder, waylaying the search party, sending them in circles, but it is too late.

A night fury lies helpless on the forest floor and a young boy stands before it, carrying an axe too large and too heavy. He stares into its eyes and sees the same fear he feels reflected in them and he thinks, helplessly, that under different circumstances—

His father is behind him, proud at last, proud for the first time in his life. He swings the axe. Berk is plunged into a weeklong storm and he feels empty inside, like something vital has been stolen from him—like he has excised it himself, took dagger and needle to his torso, boyish hands reaching in and ripping out something he can't possibly understand, but aches in its absence all the same. The gods aren't laughing.

*

At home, a head is mounted on the wall, watching him move while it is lifeless. At the forge, yellow eyes stare out from the pages of his notebook.

He can't stop drawing it. He can't stop seeing it.

*

A different life, he dreams. A better life. But at night, he wakes to fire raining from the sky as dragons come again. He isn't afraid of fire. How can he be, when he toils by the forge?

Fire doesn't scare him, and as the village burns down again, he stays by his hearth, pounding at metal. What once was considered a nuisance is now welcomed, encouraged by the villagers who used to scorn him.

It's everything he's ever wanted.

Isn't it?

*

The dragons come, heedless of the death among them because that's just what dragons do. They come and spit fire, stealing food and laying waste, killing and dying in their own turn.

It was just one dragon. Not enough to make a difference—but the dragon bones start piling up.

They're building on top of death, and he's one of them. His own hands are building weapons for more efficient death and no one cares that he can't actually wield any of the weapons himself, that he hasn't actually changed—not physically, at least. In the face of his first kill, they all look the other way, ignoring their own malice, the venom they once spat in his face. Not pest, not menace, not anymore.

*

They give him a statue that he built with his own hands, slaving in the forge. Look, they say, look how much we love you. And he, feeling calluses and burns inside his palms, smiles gingerly and nods.

In his notebook, he draws wings and wonders what flight would feel like.

*

One day, he notices that fewer dragons come with every raid. The villagers, not exactly noticing but sensing the fight is easier, sheds his heavy armor and weaponry in favor of their old, tried and true methods.

The statue of him had burned down three raids past. They never ask him to rebuild it.

There is a pile of his inventions that grows by the hour, cast off by the villagers. Useless. Even when they throw its contents at the dragons, making a sport of it, boasting of their strength as they launch his inventions out to sea, the heap never seems to shrink.

He thinks of it as his new monument.

*

His father is growing wearier by the day, though he seems happy that the dragons have stopped coming for two moons now. Sometimes, when he is feeling particularly jovial, he honors him, his son, with a flagon of wine at the feasting table.

It is more than he ever thought he'd get.

The dragons have stopped coming.

The whispers have stopped trailing him.

His father is proud, so proud, proud at last.

The dragon head on the wall in their home—it burned during the last raid, no longer there to haunt him.

Everything is good.

*

Without dragons to kill, the villagers turn to themselves for entertainment. The dragon arena becomes a misnomer as they take to battling each other in them, never with deadly intent but arms and legs get lost sometimes. They turn to him to craft them new ones. He frowns and wonders why they think he'd be capable of such things, but Gobber teaches him well and soon the student surpasses the teacher.

But bloodsport is only fun for so long when the blood is all accidental, so his father straps two axes onto his back and leads a fleet of ships out to conquer new land. Better boats, they ask for, better weapons, lighter armor.

His pile of inventions vanish—some reclaimed, some melted down.

*

The tenth patrol comes home with tales of conquest, as expected, and a rumor of a red death. His father says it is their own legend, spawned from the survivors of their raids.

By candlelight, as he is drawing in his journal—wings, still, and yellow eyes—he is not so sure.

He says nothing.

*

It comes in a cloud of ash and death, larger than mountains and more damning than any of the raids before—more than all of them combined. They see it from afar, and they pull him from his bed, asking, begging, to be saved.

He does not know what to do except forge. His old inventions do no good, though the villagers whoop each time a hit lands. The Red Death doesn't flinch.

It does, however, seem content to toy with them. Too soon, inevitably, its ravenous appetite consumes it—and it, in turn, consumes the village.

*

He sticks his hands into the fire. Above him, thunder brews, and the gods—oh, the gods, they hate him.

(They aren't laughing.)


End file.
